Sunday, January 31, 2010

OK ... no big speech here. Just me saying that I'm tired of the "white text on black background" look. So I might be attempting a redesign shortly. Or not.

Good grief, Google messed up the Blogger editing interface while I was on sabbatical. I can sort of understand why software engineers hate users (and all other humans), but I'm not sure that taking their generalized life-frustration out on everyone via punitive designs and randomly malfunctional applications is helping anyone's cause. Unless they are in league with the Computerized Hive Mind to kill us all. In which case ....... touché.

Sure, obituaries always feature rebuttals. It's very common to get someone on there to argue that the deceased, in fact, sucked. I can only imagine the chorus of "con" arguments ATC aired when Ronald Reagan died. That is, I can imagine that totally not happening at all.

"There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect," Horowitz declared. "Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse."

Stronger Than Dirt:

"There is absolutely nothing in Ronald Reagan's political record that is worthy of any kind of respect," STDPM declared. "Reagan represents a fringe mentality which unfortunately seduced millions of people in the wacky-wacky 1980s. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of dumb people for the worse."

Monday, January 25, 2010

I can't decide what's more annoying and moronic: "Who dat?" or "Da Bearsss." I think I'll just flip over all the cards and say the entire NFL is annoying and moronic. Thank the nonexistent invisible omnipotent-yet-emotionally-insecure giant sky father another football season is almost over.

Friday, January 22, 2010

THAT LONG NEWSPAPER SPOON was a xerox mag I sporadically produced between 1990 and 2000. The name is derived from a quote from Naked Lunch. I stopped working on it in the middle of putting together issue number 37, for reasons that have never been clear. Just lost the thread, or something.

TLNS started out being pure political screed ... rants, raves, and peeves. Then I started mixing in some fiction around issue number three, and by the teens, certainly by the twenties, it morphed into a serialized novel. Always to remain unfinished.

At present, I can't stand to read any of them — from the beginning to the end — but the cheap, shitty collage covers crack me up. So here are three more artifacts from the early days of "CBRAT — The Print Years," in the form of three unfolded TLNS covers (back cover appearing on the left, front cover on the right) that I like to think of as "The George Herbert Walker Bush Trilogy."

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Democrats are the Washington Generals of ... well, Washington. Their job is to lose, and they're comfortable with that role. I think they prefer being the opposition party, anyway, because then all the pols have to do is feed their constituents' anger, rather than actually deliver anything.

Friday, January 15, 2010

As part of my gradual buildup to a relaunch, here's a vintage Colicky Baby production — the covers to issue number 9 of "That Long Newspaper Spoon."

I did this one back in my old law school digs in Urbana. The clerk at the Kinko's near campus refused to xerox it due to copyright problems. (I wanted to get the "key op" to copy them instead of doing it myself on the self-serve machines, because the self-serve machines tended to suck.) Anyway, I didn't let that small brush with intellectual-property fascism stop me. I can't remember where I ended up photocopying them ... maybe on the office machine where I worked.

I never did latch onto any kind of xerox or zine culture scene in Champaign-Urbana, though, like I did in DeKalb — probably because I was too busy being in law school. So I don't think I distributed many of these. Maybe 20 copies, possibly as few as 10.

Right now, there are still a few Democrats I might vote for this year. But every time a Democratic politician uses the words "perfect," "enemy," and "good" in the same sentence — in regard to health care "reform" or otherwise — I am scratching another name off the list of potential vote-getters.